A Tale of Dissections, Real-Life Dr. Frankensteins, and the Creation of Mary Shelley's Masterpiece

About the Book

Told with the verve and ghoulish fun of a Tim Burton film, The Lady and Her Monsters is a highly entertaining blend of literary history, lore, and early scientific exploration that traces the origins of the greatest horror story of all time–Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Exploring the frightful milieu in which Frankenstein was written, Roseanne Montillo, an exciting new literary talent, recounts how Shelley's Victor Frankenstein mirrored actual scientists of the period. Montillo paints a rich portrait of Shelley and her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and their contemporaries and their friend Lord Byron. Intellectually curious, they were artists, poets, and philosophers, united in captivation with the occultists and daring scientists risking their reputations and their immortal souls to advance our understanding of human anatomy and medicine.

These remarkable investigations could not be undertaken without the cutthroat grave robbers who prowled cemeteries for a supply of fresh corpses. The newly dead were used for both private and very public autopsies and dissections, as well as the most daring trials of all: attempts at human reanimation through the application of electricity.

Juxtaposing monstrous mechanization and rising industrialism with the sublime beauty and decadence of the legendary Romantics who defined the age, Montillo takes us into a world where poets become legends in salons and boudoirs; where fame-hungry "doctors" conduct shocking performances for rabid, wide-eyed audiences; and where maniacal body snatchers secretly toil in castle dungeons.

Educator and Librarian Resources

Critical Praise

“Her narrative… rattles enjoyably through a lurid and restless landscape. … Equally a literary and a scientific endeavor.” —

“Montillo achieves a freshness through her lively narrative approach and a fascination with long-ago science and its ethics that sparks across the pages.” —

“Enthusiatic prose... A Spirited investigation of the bizarre times that inspired Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.” —

“A delicious and enticing journey into the origins of a masterpiece.” —

“With a flair for both drama and detail, Montillo breathes her own kind of life into the story of the men determined to discover its very elements.” —

“Spills the dirt on the making of the 19th-century novel--affairs, family drama, a lake house with Lord Byron!--and paints a grimly fascinating picture of the dissections and experiments in “animal electricity” that inspired the gothic tale.” —

“Montillo’s book is a welcome tribute to the literary, and especially the scientific, roots of the story.” —

“A welcome tribute to the literary, and especially the scientific, roots of the story.” —

“Montillo never loses sight of the fact that it was Mary Shelley’s imagination that sewed the pieces together - and provided the vital spark that keeps the tale alive nearly two centuries on.” —

“A haunting picture of an era in which science and the arts overlapped, a perfect storm in which inspiration for “Frankenstein” could strike. Like a bolt of lightning.” —

HarperCollins Reader

When you purchase e-books from HarperCollins, you can read it on our HarperCollins Reader App that is available on your iPhone/iPad, Android or Kindle Fire.

We encourage you to use the HC Reader App since it supports our type of e-book files and you may have some trouble with a different reader app.

Instructions

Please make sure you have a HarperCollins Account. If you purchase/have purchased an e-book from HarperCollins, this is your account login and password. Otherwise, please click here to register.

Download the HC Reader App on iPhone/iPad, Android or Kindle Fire and sign in with your HarperCollins account (your username is an e-mail address). Please note that Kindle Fire users must edit their settings (Settings < Device) to allow installation of apps in order to download the HC Reader App. This App is not available in the Amazon App Store.